IN

VII. SOCIAL NEEDS AND CONSIDERATIONS

VII.7. A FOCUSED APPROACH FOR APPROPRIATE SEED RELIEF

Recently, the International Food Policy Research Institute described steps for "fighting famine in Southern Africa" ( text at web site: http://www.ifpri.org/pubs/ib/ib8.pdf).

The table below presents some draft corollary steps for distribution of seed relief in emergency or post-emergency settings. Such a "focused approach" to agricultural aid should be considered as a lower budget alternative to the Rural Economic Stimulus Package (RESP) approach to economic rehabilitation described later. The focused delivery of seed and fertilizer approach runs the risk of limited effectiveness as a result of providing only a portion of a required agricultural package and it may be impossible to focus on the neediest farmers if little is known about what varieties of crops are suited to their areas.

One of the most ethically-sensitive aspects of the aid program in Afghanistan concerns its as-yet limited capacity to assist farming communities in rainfed areas. Rainfed communities tend to be the "weaker stakeholders" compared to their counterpart communities in irrigated areas.

Irrigated agro-eco-systems in centrally-located areas are normally much more productive per unit of land or seed than their rainfed counterparts, and tend to be closer to major markets and urban areas. It thus could be perceived to be more important to the national economy to have irrigated farms returned to full production on a more accelerated schedule than to give assistance to rainfed farms. Delivery of appropriate agricultural aid to rainfed farmers and farmers generally in areas characterized by high food insecurity poses a more difficult set of problems to planners. Transport logistics are more difficult, availability of appropriate seed is lower, and the probability of getting successful crops is lower.

During a three-day ICARDA-FAO-USAID workshop in Kabul in May, one sentiment expressed privately by a non-seed professional, was that aid agencies needed to put emergency seed aid work behind them and concentrate on supporting the development of a professional seed industry in Afghanistan. Implicit in this view was the idea that lack of improved seed was one of the most important constraints to raising production in irrigated agricultural districts. A more-or-less unspoken corollary was that not enough was known about the needs of rainfed farmers to design programs of agricultural assistance for them. Rehabilitation in rainfed areas might better be deferred--it has been suggested--until a two-year research project to be funded by IDRC has better-defined the needs of Afghanistan's rainfed areas.

Table 30 (PDF File 54Kb)
Some Proposed Draft Principles for Distribution of Seed Relief

A major shortcoming of the IFPRI food relief principle and the proposed corollary seed relief principle is that a great deal of time must be spent on collecting data and compiling lists according to need. In the interim, needy farmers and people suffer. This approach is good for a long-term situation, but seldom will apply to new, initial or sudden emergency situations.

VII.8. ETHNIC CONSIDERATIONS

Understanding the ethnic composition of rural communities is often key to formulating the legislation and project design needed to move pro-actively against discrimination in education, employment, credit, land and water, health care, and practically all essential aspects that make up the fabric of rural life. Ignorance of ethnic composition of societies tends to favor the socio-political status quo. In certain sensitive circumstances, questions on ethnicity have been left out of census and other social research due to risks thought to be associated with knowledge about ethnic demographics and how they may have shifted over time. It should remain up to the Afghan people to decide whether such information can be useful in building a more just and dynamic society.

To the extent that aid agencies and the GOA continue to intervene on behalf of vulnerable social groups in Afghanistan, knowledge of ethnic issues will be important in identifying the social basis of some vulnerabilities and inequalities. It may be that land rent reform legislation would inevitably have an ethnic edge, helping some groups and hurting others.

Table 31 (PDF File 57Kb)
Population of Main Ethnic Groups of Afghanistan, 1979

VII.9. HEALTH CARE

Nationwide access to primary health care needs to include universal vaccination of all children as well as free and ready access to family planning services for all married women. A nationwide program to promote family planning is urgently needed to help reduce population growth from an estimated 3% per annum to 1.3% per annum within ten years. According to one Afghan gynecologist working in Wardak Province, many Afghan women eagerly desire access to family planning, but are constrained by often illiterate men who adhere to an antiquated "as many as God gives me" approach to family size. Such an approach-an utter anachronism in the age of universal vaccination of children--is already condemning many rural households to a rapid and irreversible diminution of arable farmland per person to levels below the threshold of land needed for economic viability and a reasonable quality of life. On-going lack of awareness of, and lack of access to, family planning possibly constitutes the greatest threat to Afghanistan's security and social stability. As President Karzai's wife is a gynecologist, there is good reason to believe that proposals to provide forms of family planning endorsed by the Muslim religion would be considered with interest at high levels of government (Permanent sterilization is not endorsed by Islam, but use of IUD, birth control pills, condoms, Depo-Provera-like injectibles, and Norplan implants, which give 5-year protection against conception, are all likely to be acceptable in Islamic principles).

1998 statistics suggest that the average Afghan woman gave birth to almost 7 children during her lifetime, compared to women in developed countries who on average give birth to less than two.

IUD and birth control pills appear to be the most common form of birth control currently used in Afghanistan, although injectible Depo-Provera, which provides three-month coverage, is also reportedly used. Norplan is a contraceptive consisting of small rods inserted under the skin of the wrist, and can provide coverage for up to five years.

In addition to improving the quality of life for Afghan women, another key reason for reducing the population growth rate is that the supply of arable land is already inadequate. The mission's windshield survey of 28 respondents in Logar and Kabul Provinces found that none of the sample households had come even close to meeting their subsistence food requirements. Only one household indicated that their wheat crop had provided more than half a year's food supply.

Descriptive Statistics: food months covered by 2001 wheat crop in Kabul-Logar Provinces